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<title>Humans Can't Fly by LittleJustices</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26236522">Humans Can't Fly</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleJustices/pseuds/LittleJustices'>LittleJustices</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Touhou Project</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Backstory, Flash Fic, Gen, Pre-Canon, Unreliable Narrator</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 12:00:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>887</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26236522</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleJustices/pseuds/LittleJustices</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Yet another story about Sanae in high school, but from an outside perspective.</p>
<p>Contains mention/discussion of cults and cult violence (specifically, the Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attacks) and the appearance of a suicide attempt.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Humans Can't Fly</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The second half probably takes place the day before the Moriya Shrine appears in Gensokyo.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>    When I was in 11th grade, there was this girl in my class.</p>
<p>    I think her name was Kochiya. Why do I barely remember her? I remember Maeda, and he was the most forgettable loser I’ve ever met.</p>
<p>    Anyway, she was in a cult.</p>
<p>    I guess that might be unfair. Everyone said it was a cult. It was some kind of local Shinto offshoot, a new religious movement. It doesn’t exist anymore. </p>
<p>    I kind of forgot about it for a while, but after I found out it had dissolved, I did a bit of research into it. There wasn’t a lot to be found. It claimed to follow a tradition going back to pre-Buddhist times but was incorporated as its own religious movement in the eighties. There was something about an unbroken line of wind priestesses that could work miracles, and Kochiya was the latest. Definitely <em> sounds </em> shady, right?</p>
<p>    Well, after the sarin gas attacks, nobody was really interested in giving religions a fair shake for a while. Obviously, we at school were too young to really remember the attacks; I was like four when they happened. But we learned about them and picked the distrust up from our relatives. I think there was a girl in another class whose aunt had gotten seriously injured back then. And the Monday after Asahara Shoko was sentenced to death, that would’ve been the first year of middle school, everyone was talking behind her back. (<em>Their </em> backs<span class="ILfuVd"><span class="hgKElc">—</span></span>both Kochiya and the girl with the injured aunt.)</p>
<p>    Every religion in Japan had PR issues after that, even if they had nothing to do with the attacks, but some handled it better than others. Kochiya’s apparently started hemorrhaging followers and community support immediately. By the time we were in high school, there couldn’t have been more than a handful of members besides her, and it would’ve been mostly old people who were already around before it got incorporated.</p>
<p>    I talked to her a few times. One more thing I remember: Inexplicable confidence. She really believed the miracle worker stuff, though she knew better than to make a big deal about it. Phony or not, she definitely had charisma. My classmate, the cult leader.</p>
<p>    I guess if people could just leave, was it really a cult? I don’t know.</p>
<p>    I never interacted with her that much, but maybe I should have. It’s the what-ifs that get you, right? I think I might be the last person who ever saw her.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>    I don’t remember why I was looking for her. Probably something like cleaning duty or handouts. I don’t think it was anything personal or important.</p>
<p>    (I’d thought about asking her out a few times. Never did, though. It just seemed like a bad idea.)</p>
<p>    I found her on the rooftop.</p>
<p>    Scene straight out of a movie, really. Late afternoon, light breeze, cicada noises, two students alone on the rooftop. What’s next? Quiet music, awkward discussion, a bit of melancholy, building tension, a tentative ‘see you tomorrow’, wait for it, confession. Surprise, tears of joy, happy end. Yeah, right.</p>
<p>    Actually, Kochiya didn’t notice I was there, because she was facing away from me. Standing close to the edge, looking over the neighborhood, praying or something. Dangerously close to the edge, I thought. Our school didn’t really have fences on the roof and it was a three story drop onto pavement, or two onto the bicycle shelter if you were lucky.</p>
<p>    I hesitated to call out for some reason. Probably I was staring. But then she backed up a few steps and my gut said, she’s going to jump.</p>
<p>    It makes sense, right? Member of a dying cult, endless low-key gossip, she probably got tons of crap I had no idea about. I wasn’t consciously thinking about any of that, but the subconscious thinks fast.</p>
<p>    She did jump. I was close enough and reacted fast enough that I managed to close the distance and grab her arm, but not before her feet left the edge of the roof.</p>
<p>    That exact moment, when she pushed off and I latched on, we were hit by this massive gust of wind from behind. And in that same moment, I somehow got the idea that she was jumping up, not down. Like I could read her mind by touching her or some kind of revelation. That she wanted me to jump, too. That she was, impossibly, saying to me,</p>
<p>    <em> Believe in me. Fly with me. </em></p>
<p>    I didn’t jump. I pulled. Some adrenaline-drunk part of me wanted to take the gamble, but humans can’t fly. I’d pull her back onto the roof and maybe I could help her work through stuff.</p>
<p>    Physics doesn’t work that way, though. I probably thought or imagined most of that while we were falling. I don’t remember anything else about the fall, so that must have been it.</p>
<p>    We got lucky. That wind gust must have pushed us far enough to land in a bush that broke our fall.</p>
<p>    While I was still dazed from the fall, I think she looked at me and then left without another word. I should’ve stopped her, talked to her, right? But I guess I was too confused, because by the time I got up, she was already gone. Never came to school again. No one even questioned it.</p>
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